“As is often the case with drug raids, the initial, self-serving police account proved to be inaccurate in several crucial ways. Although Thonetheva supposedly was armed and dangerous, he proved to be neither: He was unarmed when he was arrested later that night at his girlfriend’s apartment without incident (and without the deployment of a “distraction device”). Although Terrell claimed police had no reason to believe they were endangering children, even cursory surveillance could easily have discovered that fact: There were children’s toys, including a plastic wading pool, in the yard, where Bounkham frequently played with his kids. In the driveway was a minivan containing four child seats that was decorated with decals depicting a mother, a father, three little girls, and a baby boy.
Four months after the raid, a local grand jury faulted the task force that executed it for a “hurried” and “sloppy” investigation that was “not in accordance with the best practices and procedures.” Ten months after that, a federal grand jury charged Nikki Autry, the deputy who obtained the no-knock warrant for the raid, with lying in her affidavit. “Without her false statements, there was no probable cause to search the premises for drugs or to make the arrest,” said John Horn, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. “And in this case, the consequences of the unlawful search were tragic.”
The negligence and misconduct discovered after the paramilitary operation that burned and mutilated Bou Bou Phonesavanh are common features of “botched” drug raids that injure or kill people, including nationally notorious incidents such as the 2019 deaths of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas in Houston and the 2020 death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. But beyond the specific failures detailed in the wake of such outrages is the question of what these operations are supposed to accomplish even when they go as planned. In the vain hope of preventing substance abuse, drug prohibition authorizes police conduct that otherwise would be readily recognized as criminal, including violent home invasions that endanger innocent bystanders as well as suspects and police officers.
…
what are police trying to achieve when they mount an operation like this one? As the grand jury implicitly conceded, busting one dealer has no measurable impact on the availability of drugs: If police nab someone like Thonetheva, someone else will surely take his place. But from 1995 through 2023, police in the United States arrested people for producing or selling illegal drugs millions of times. Did that massive undertaking make a dent in the drug supply big enough to reduce consumption?
Survey data suggest it did not. The federal government estimated that 25 percent of Americans 12 or older used illegal drugs in 2023, up from 11 percent in 1995. Meanwhile, the age-adjusted overdose death rate rose more than tenfold.
…
SWAT teams, originally intended for special situations involving hostages, active shooters, or riots, today are routinely used to execute drug searches.
…
Even when drug raids do not technically involve SWAT teams, they frequently feature “dynamic entry” in the middle of the night. Although that approach is supposed to reduce the potential for violence through surprise and a show of overwhelming force, it often has the opposite effect. As the Habersham County grand jury noted, these operations are inherently dangerous, especially since armed men breaking into a home after the residents have gone to bed can easily be mistaken for criminals, with potentially deadly consequences.
…
How often does this sort of thing happen? There is no way to know. Prosecutors, judges, and jurors tend to discount the protestations of drug defendants, especially if they have prior convictions, and automatically accept the testimony of cops
…
The underlying problem, of course, is the decision to treat that exchange of drugs for money as a crime in the first place. By authorizing the use of force in response to peaceful transactions among consenting adults, prohibition sets the stage for the senseless violence that periodically shocks Americans who are otherwise inclined to support the war on drugs. But like the grand jurors in Habersham County, they typically do not question the basic morality of an enterprise that predictably leads to such outrages.”
“Trump’s contention that Mexico and Canada could “easily solve” the drug trafficking problem was equally dubious. For more than a century, politicians have been promising to “stop the flow” of illegal drugs, and they have never come close to achieving that goal—not for lack of trying, but because the economics of prohibition doom all such efforts.
Prohibition allows traffickers to earn a hefty risk premium that provides a strong incentive to find ways around any barriers that governments manage to erect. Drugs can be produced in many different places, and they can be smuggled into the country in a wide variety of ways. Any serious effort to prevent drugs from entering the United States would entail intolerable disruption of travel and trade, and it still would not succeed. That challenge is magnified in the case of a highly potent drug like fentanyl because large numbers of doses can be transported in small packages that are hard to detect.
…
Since Canada accounts for only a tiny percentage of fentanyl entering the United States, “flood” seems like an exaggeration. In any case, it is not clear what would qualify as “adequate steps” or “satisfactory resources” as far as Trump is concerned. Taking Trump at his word, there is no such thing, because there is nothing that Canada or Mexico can do that will be sufficient to achieve the impossible goal of stopping illegal drugs from entering the United States.”
“Throughout the early 2020s, there was a wave of disturbing crimes related to the shadowy Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Harp demonstrates that government officials turned a blind eye as JSOC operators stole, killed, raped, and smuggled, shielding them from both military and civilian justice.
At first, it may be hard to understand where the word cartel in Fort Bragg Cartel comes from. The first half of the book is a history of JSOC—an organization that includes Delta Force and SEAL Team Six—and a collection of seemingly unconnected stories about JSOC veterans behaving badly. But the conspiracy comes into focus in part four. Former U.S. Army quartermaster Timothy Dumas and former policeman Freddie Wayne Huff were leading a criminal enterprise that brought together JSOC operators, the local redneck mafia, Puerto Rican smugglers, Los Zetas of Mexico, and even a former Islamic State fighter.
…
From late 2020 through early 2023, 12 Fort Bragg soldiers were murdered or accused of murder, and some of these cases remain unsolved. Violent crime in the area is so bad that the nearby town of Fayetteville is nicknamed “Fatalville.” The most infamous case might be the murder of Spc. Enrique Roman-Martinez. Suspected of selling LSD, he disappeared in May 2020 during a camping trip. A few days later, Roman-Martinez’s decapitated head washed up on a beach. The case is still completely cold.
In a 2021 interview with military police, obtained by Harp, the commander of Delta Force’s administrative headquarters complained that JSOC was sending problem soldiers and accused criminals to serve desk duty in his unit rather than discharging them from the military. “Having some of the most tactically skilled, physically fit, and intelligent operators in the military coming in on bad terms is dangerous,” the commander said. “We intentionally limit their physical presence as it is a hindrance to the good order and discipline of the company.”
…
“They were buying dope from the cartel,” local pawnbroker Sharon Shivley told Harp. “Somebody that’s associated with Mexicans. Who will kill you if you don’t pay for your shit.” As it turns out, Huff’s supplier was Los Zetas, a gang founded by a renegade Mexican special forces unit—trained, ironically, at Fort Bragg.
…
Lavigne and Huff escaped so many close brushes with the law that other gangsters wondered whether they might be police informants. But the Fort Bragg cartel appears to have been protected instead by North Carolina’s good old boys’ culture. Veterans can “show up in their Class A uniforms looking great” to court and expect to have any charges thrown out with a “thank you for your service,” said Det. Diane Ballard, a former tenant of Dumas’. Although Huff was a civilian, he had his own network of law enforcement friends to lean on. According to Harp, court documents also imply that Huff had gay sexual blackmail material on at least one law enforcement officer.
The murder of Dumas and Lavigne finally forced the government’s hand, bringing the full force of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security down on Huff’s network. Still, Harp suggests that the authorities haven’t really followed up on every possible lead.
…
It’s common now, almost to the point of cliche, to speak of “the war coming home.” And to a large degree, the Fort Bragg cartel was a case of war-on-terror blowback. But exposure to combat doesn’t automatically turn soldiers into criminals. Nor do hard drugs. What all the characters involved in this bizarre saga had in common was a total lack of accountability. As long as America treats JSOC as a warrior caste above the law, some of these warriors will abuse their privileges.”
“Alexander Ledvina was convicted of violating a federal law that bars illegal drug users from owning guns. Exactly a year later, President Joe Biden, whose administration had zealously defended that law in court, pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, for committing the same crime.
Ledvina, a marijuana user who was 26 when he was arrested, was sentenced to four years and three months in federal prison. Hunter Biden, a middle-aged former crack user, faced up to 25 years in prison after he was convicted of illegal gun possession and two related firearm offenses. But thanks to his father’s intervention, he did not suffer any criminal punishment at all.
…
Under 18 USC 922(g)(3), “an unlawful user” of “any controlled substance” who receives or possesses a firearm is committing a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.”
Hunter Biden defends himself and spits hot fire. Takes on MAGA, Democrats, Jake Tapper, and a waterfall of lies. Discusses his: drug addiction, gun charge, and late taxes.
“When it became clear that overdoses had risen dramatically in 2020, experts surmised that it had something to do with the social and economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s response to it—an impression confirmed by subsequent research.
A 2024 study found that “volatile drug use during the COVID-19 pandemic was common, appeared to be driven by structural vulnerability, and was associated with increased overdose risk.” Another study published the same year concluded that “policies limiting in-person activities significantly increased” drug death rates.
If pandemic-related disruption drove the 2020 overdose spike, the return to normal life seems like a plausible explanation for subsequent decreases, although the death toll was still about 14 percent higher last year than it was in 2019. Last fall, University of North Carolina drug researcher Nabarun Dasgupta and his colleagues suggested other possible factors, including wider availability of naloxone, an opioid antagonist that quickly reverses overdoses.”
“A new survey of American adults suggests that illicit opioid use in the United States is much more common than the government’s numbers indicate. In the survey, conducted via the online platform Respondi in June 2024, 7.5 percent of respondents reported they had used (or might have used) illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF) in the previous 12 months, 25 times the rate suggested by the government-sponsored National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).”